I'm In Constant Inner Dialogue With My

I Don't Read Reviews Any More, But I'm Told By My Publisher Who Gives Me An Account Of What People Have Been Writing And It's Been A Very Split Kind Of Response.

There Is A Line From The Marina Tsvetaeva Poem I'm So Fond Of: "in This Most Christian Of Worlds/ All Poets Are Jews." What She Means Is That Writers And Artists Are Outside The Normal Flow Of Daily Life, The Normal Flow Of Society In General.

I'd Go Nuts. Because People Look At The Same Passage And One Person Will Say This Is The Best Thing He's Ever Read, And Another Person Will Say It's Absolutely Idiotic. I Mean, There's No Way To Reconcile Those Two Things. You Just Have To Forget The Whole Business Of What People Are Saying.

You See, The Interesting Thing About Books, As Opposed, Say, To Films, Is That It's Always Just One Person Encountering The Book, It's Not An Audience, It's One To One.

Reading, At The Deepest Level, Is A Physical Experience. Most People Are Not Attuned To This, Most People Don't Learn How To Read - Poetry For Example, Or High-quality Prose. They're Used To Reading Magazines And Newspapers, Which Are Only Of The Mind, But Not Of The Body.